This webinar will provide sound strategies for planning affordable, nutritious meals for ASD adults – from group settings to single-family homes. We will also discuss the logistics of creating a healthy and enjoyable eating environment and provide tips for how to deal with barriers to change.

Erika Laurion, MS, CN, CDN is a nutritionist and has specialized in low income and under served population. She works with as a nutritional consultant for group homes of adults with disabilities. Erika also does hands-on nutrition where she teaches how to cook while giving nutrition advice. Erika received her Masters from the Institute of Human Nutrition of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

It’s been clearly documented that residues from antibiotics wind up in the nonorganic meat we eat, something that hasn’t been studied for its long-term health impacts in people. What is immediately apparent, though, is the strong science showing that feeding healthy farm animals antibiotics for the last several decades has created untreatable superbug infections that in America kill about 17,000 people a year, more than AIDS. About 80 percent of all antibiotics administered in the U.S. are used on healthy animals, not people, creating a public health crisis.

Despite this dangerous public health threat, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Wednesday announced that it will not formally ban the use of antibiotics in livestock, but will instead ask the industrial food system to voluntarily stop the dangerous practice. “FDA doesn’t actually require the livestock industry to do anything to stop endangering human health,” explains Avinash Kar, attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is an ineffective response to the alarming rise in antibiotic resistance, which threatens human health.”

It is alarming. Pesticides and toxins are in everything – especially our food. My husband and i have been buying organic for almost a year. It’s doable & it’s healthy. If anyone is looking for a local organic farmer, check out: http://www.localharvest.org/ or head out to Kaiser Permanente’s farmers market located at 7300 N. Fresno Street, Fresno, CA 93720 on Wednesdays, 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., year-round.